Barry Hannah

He has published numerous
novels and short story collections set in the South, but to understand
the writer behind his characters one must delve deeply into that unknown
region of the mind where shadows take form, where the simple and sublime
take on a complexity akin to the human spirit itself.

Hannah was born in Clinton,
Mississippi, on April 23, 1942, and earned a B.A. from Mississippi
College in 1964. In 1966, he earned a Master of Arts degree
from the University of Arkansas; a year later he graduated
with a Master
of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Arkansas and began teaching
creative writing at Clemson University
in South Carolina, where he remained until 1973. During this time,
he earned several impressive awards, including the Bellaman Foundation
Award in Fiction (1970) and the Bread Loaf Fellowship for Writing
(1971). In 1972, Hannah published his first novel, Geronimo Rex,
for which he won the William Faulkner Prize for writing and earned
a nomination for the National Book Award. A year later, he came
out with Nightwatchmen to positive reviews, and his reputation
as a writer to be reckoned with was well under way.

After a one-year position as Writer-in-residence
at Middlebury College in Vermont, he began
a five-year position at the University
of Alabama teaching literature and creative writing. It was
during this time that he wrote and published what many consider
to be one of the finest collections of short fiction in the contemporary
South, Airships (1978). That same year, Airships won
the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award, setting the stage for his
receiving the prestigious Award for Literature from the American
Institute of Arts and Letters in 1979.

In 1983, Hannah published The Tennis
Handsome and returned to the University of Mississippi as
Writer-in-residence. After
returning to Ole Miss, he continued to publish novels and short
story collections to rave reviews, including Captain Maximus
(1985), Hey Jack! (1987), Boomerang (1989), Never
Die (1991), and Bats Out of Hell (1993). In 1996, Hannah
published the short story collection High Lonesome, which has been nominated for the Pulitzer
Prize in Fiction.
He followed that in 2001 with a novel, Yonder Stands Your Orphan.

When asked for his perspective on writing
and teaching literature and writing by Ole Miss English Department
Chair Dan Williams,
Hannah responded by saying that "Reading and writing train our people
for logic, grace, and precision of thought, and begin a lifelong
study of the exceptional in human existence. I think literature
is the history of the soul. Writing should be a journey into worthy
perception."